WhirledView

Hormones in the News

by Cheryl Rofer

[No, this is not the post I've promised several readers; consider it a light diversion.]

Once upon a time it was us women who were besieged by raging hormones. Now, the New York Times tells us, it's the men.

If a research paper published earlier this year is correct, traders have become prisoners of their endocrine systems — testosterone, the elixir of male aggressiveness, during a bull market; cortisol, a steroid that helps the body deal with stress, when the bears take over.

The study suggests that raging hormones might explain why the men who rule the global markets send them rocketing up when they’re on a roll, and swooping down when they get scared, exhibiting judgment that can remind you of the guys in an Adam Sandler movie.

I suspect that there's a lot of truth in this, but the recommendation the Times gives us for improving the situation is shallow.

Women, Dr. Coates explained, have only about 10 percent of the testosterone men have; their judgment is not bollixed by it. He said he also suspected that women were less likely to produce excess cortisol. So he advised getting “more women and older men on trading floors.”

I suspect that, for those particular hormonal reasons, women and older men who like the trading floor will be hard to find.

But it's not the emotional traders who are the problem. Once we're aware that emotions are at work in the markets (and we've known that for a long time), we can do our best to find people who are less affected by those emotions and put them where they can influence events, which may well include more women in the regulatory and central banking organizations than we've seen.

Meanwhile, psychiatrists are deciding what disorders to include in the next edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders." The argument itself seems to have a testosteronal aspect to it, being among men (only men are listed in the article, anyway), one of whom advocates that their discussion be more open, while others prefer keeping their deliberations among themselves only. And, again, the reporting may be biased, but does anyone besides me find a bias toward pathological femininity in the new disorders being proposed?

"Apathy Disorder," "Parental Alienation Syndrome," "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder," "Compulsive Buying Disorder," "Internet Addiction" and "Relational Disorder"

Finally, there's something going on here, but I haven't taken the time (still working on those posts to come!) to track it down. The New York Times collects some links for those who have more time.

And Emptywheel wonders about the Sunday talk shows.

Friday Blogging

by Cheryl Rofer

Oh dear. We've been quite negligent this week. I know that I've been trying out different ways to say and think "Barack Obama is our president-elect." With any luck, Bill Stewart should have a post up soon.

In addition to high-fives and other mutual self-congratulations, I have actually been working on two substantive posts that I hope to have up in another day or so. But a number of people keep trying to fill up my Saturday. When am I going to have time to water my houseplants, guys???

Avuncular American reminded me that WhirledView also had an anniversary, on Election Day of all times! So congrats to AA and also to us! Four years for us.

So here are a couple of my favorite photos, just to keep things going. They're both from the northeast coast of Estonia in the spring.

Bits and Pieces - Science Edition

by Cheryl Rofer

Finally, a positive contribution. Sir Mark Sykes, the British diplomat who helped draw boundary lines after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919, may be about to contribute to our understanding of influenza. Sykes died in the great influenza pandemic, and his body has been exhumed by scientists at the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. The scientists hope to sequence the DNA of influenza virus still in Sykes’s body to obtain clues as to why that particular strain of influenza was so deadly.

Triboluminescence – and worse! You may be aware that wintergreen Life Savers give off light when you crunch them and that sticky tape does the same when you pull it off the roll. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, have now found that tape gives off x-rays as well. They have taken x-rays of their fingers using tape as the x-ray source. Yet one more thing for purists to worry about.

Bits and Pieces - Followup Edition

by Cheryl Rofer

Just wondering… Today’s New York Times reveals that the US military has had orders since 2004 that allow it to attack al-Qaeda bases in several countries. Syria is mentioned as one, the most recent raid into its territory being an example, but not the only time such a thing has been done. I’m just wondering if there was any connection with the Israeli raid on the alleged Syrian reactor at al-Kibar in September 2007. Al-Qaeda’s attempt at getting its very own nuclear complex? (I still have my doubts that it was really a reactor.) Certainly the silence from Syria over Israel's raid becomes less surprising when that Times article tells us that there have been several raids into Syrian territory about which the Syrians also said nothing.

Russia update. Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev have now had a telephone conversation, and Medvedev seems friendlier, which tends to support my earlier hypothesis that Medvedev’s threat to place missiles in Kaliningrad was largely bluster for the homefolks and, maybe, to get a bit of attention from the new president-elect.

A Raid Designed to Influence the Election?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

We know from past experience that the Bush administration and its political advisors will do anything, however scurrilous, to win an election. Did the White House set out to provoke Syria on October 26th, a week before election day, in a last ditch effort to get John McCain elected in spite of grim poll numbers?

The NYT this morning reveals that, since 2004, a secret executive order has permitted the U.S. military to raid across borders in 15 to 20 nations, an outgrowth of the Bush preemption policy. Usually these forays did not need explicit presidential approval. However, according to the article, only the president could authorize raids into Pakistan and Syria.

The article also reveals that there have been “several” previous raids into Syria:

Since the Iraq war began...Special Operations forces several times have made cross border raids aimed at militants and infrastructure aiding the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq. The raid in late October, however, was more noticeable than the previous raids...which helps explain why it drew a sharp protest from the Syrian government.

Was the October 26th raid designed expressly to evoke a public protest? Did the President intend to create an incident the Syrians couldn’t ignore so that the resulting squawks from Israel's enemy would throw the imminent election to the candidate running on his military record, to the candidate who would reassure the voters that their safety would be in "experienced" hands if he won, to the candidate who has staunchly supported Bush's unnecessary war in Iraq?

It would, sadly, be in character for this administration.

Fortunately, it didn't work.

Bits and Pieces - Political Edition

by Cheryl Rofer

Our long national nightmare. I’ve seen something like these two thoughts elsewhere, but not exactly as I want to say them.

1. We don’t have to pay so much attention to the nonsense churned out by the wingnuts, because we don’t have to worry about it becoming national policy. Monitor and stomp on it where necessary, of course, but we will not have to worry after January 20 that the President is listening.

2. Telling the public that the government is not working for them discourages them from taking government actions seriously or monitoring the actions of their representatives. This leads (by default or design) to a situation in which corruption will be tolerated. Representatives who share the belief in non-government are likely to feel freer to loot that government.

Going the way of the Whigs? In the Boston Globe today, Timothy Gay compares Sarah Palin and Millard Fillmore. Fillmore was one of the last of the Whigs, whose respect for his political opponents was much like Palin’s. Stunningly so, if the Globe’s op-ed is to be believed. My crystal ball is much too cloudy, but it would be a historical irony indeed if the Republicans recapitulated the demise of the party to which theirs provided the new and improved model.

Pentagon board recommends cuts in budget. The Defense Business Board, which is supposed to advise the Pentagon on best business practices, warns that the Pentagon’s bubble should be burst. The defense budget is “not sustainable,” it says, and the next president will have to consider deep cuts, particularly in expensive equipment. While I was googling to try to find the reports themselves, I found some more advice to the next president, which contains some real gems that I don’t have time to blog about now.

Meanwhile, the Defense Science Board was preparing its wishlist (h/t to J.). The Pentagon is big enough that these guys don’t talk to each other. Another reason to cut down the size of that enterprise.

At Last – A Good Idea in Nuclear Reactors?

by Cheryl Rofer

The Guardian reports on a small nuclear reactor that can provide electricity to 20,000 homes. The reactor would be installed underground and refuelled every 5-10 years. Hyperion Power Generation, located in New Mexico, plans to build the reactors. According to the Guardian, Hyperion now has more than 100 firm orders for reactors.

As usual, there isn’t as much information as I’d like to see, but there are some tantalizing hints. This website (from an organization I’ve never heard of) claims that the reactor design is based on the TRIGA reactor, which has been installed in many universities around the world. The original TRIGA design required highly enriched uranium fuel. That fuel, because it might be made into nuclear bombs, is now being replaced with fuel enriched only to reactor grade, not capable of being made into bombs.

Question: How does that work? For fission to take place, there must be a critical mass of uranium-235. If the fuel is less enriched, there must be more total uranium in the core. This problem has apparently been overcome, however, in the replacement fuel that is being loaded into university training reactors.

Installing the reactor underground is a good idea for many reasons: it is safe from having an airplane flown into it, human access can be limited, and, if anything goes wrong with the reactor, soil and concrete will attenuate radiation. However, there have to be two kinds of access: for heat removal and for refueling. In this drawing (too many pyramids – never mind), you can see two tubes going to the surface for heat removal.

A nuclear reactor produces heat, not electricity. The heat, just like the heat from a coal plant or solar thermal, runs a turbine that produces the electricity (or, in the drawing, runs a desalination plant). Turbines need maintenance and therefore cannot be sealed underground. So the heat from the underground reactor must be brought to the turbine. Typically reactors have a fluid that cools the fuel elements and a working fluid. The fluid that cools the fuel elements becomes slightly radioactive, so it cannot be blown through a turbine and exhausted to the atmosphere. It is run through a heat exchanger, where it heats the secondary coolant. Heat exchangers need maintenance, too, so they would likely be located at the surface, with the turbine. The two tubes in the drawing allow the primary coolant to cycle from the reactor to the desalination plant and back.

Score one for Teheran; Zero for Moscow

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Teheran's Olive Branch

It’s clear that the Iranian government wants to talk directly with President-elect Barack Obama about a number of issues. Or why would President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have sent a congratulatory letter to Obama – the first to a new US President-elect from an Iranian leader since before the 1979 revolution? Or, for that matter, why would Ali Akhbar Javanfekr, a senior advisor to Ahmadinejad, have engaged in a lengthy Internet contretemps with an unnamed blogger or bloggers from the State Department’s Digital Outreach Team in mid September? Or why would the US be discussing the opening of an US Interests Section in Teheran if the Iranian government didn’t want to improve relations?

Seems to me there’s likely a lot more here than meets the public eye.

In my view both countries – largely for their own domestic political reasons – have boxed themselves in for far too long. The Iranians must understand that the US retains great power status in the region.

US foreign policy decision makers must certainly realize that the Iranians have been a regional power for centuries, that they have ages old interests in increasing their influence in the Middle East and Southwest Asia but that cultural and historical differences with their neighbors are likely to be among the most significant restraining factors to achieving their goals. The US also needs to accept the reality that Iran is not going to vaporize into thin air just because we don’t like its form of government or its leaders and all that flows from them.

The good news is that Ahmadinejad’s letter to Obama may contain a beginning for the new U.S. president come January who – given the seemingly intractable problems we have in the region and with the Iranians in particular - should want to work with them rather than against them as we reduce our military presence in Iraq regardless of how the Israeli right wing or others see it.

The negotiating table, after all, is a far cheaper and healthier way to deal with one’s adversaries than through the sites of an M-16 or the employment of long distance bombers and it sure looks to me as if the Iranians are offering that opportunity.

Russia’s “post imperial funk” and bluster continues